My Novel Unforgettable' 10/44

My Novel Unforgettable' 10/44
Mitsushiro Nakagawa

All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .

Kei knew Rika’s father. It is because he found the name of Sanjo on the corner the front page of a financial paper lined up at a bookstore where he had stopped at several weeks ago. It was a small company dealing with import materials, started from a small store in Itabashi, and Rika’s father, the second generation of the store, developed it to the whole country little by little and finally made it to be listed.
Kei was able to imagine a big existence of Rika’s father to some extent from her cheerful attitude, frank way of speaking and careless attitude about trifling matters though her father's photograph did not appear in the paper.
"Now I got. You were really rich.”
Rika nodded holding a straw in her mouth. It was an agreeable, obedient reaction. The light reflected from the opposite building is diffused through the glass and makes a circle of light on her head. Kei talked unusually, being fed up with the oily smell of fast food a little.
"I thought it was strange because you’ve got Chanel sports bag.
"Why?"
“If a lot of money was paid for such a bag, a leather bag would usually be chosen?
Like others do, ah? ”
Rika kept silent for a while pop-eyed. And she said with only her eyes turned up, raising the chin slowly from a paper cup of cola,
“Kei, you are really interesting. You know, anybody usually doesn’t mind such a matter.”
“You are wrong. You don’t mind it because you are rich”

Rika leaned toward Kei over the table, impressed with him more and more though he thought she would show a bitter face, offended with him.
”C’mon, this is our much?awaited first date. Let’s have a nice drink.”
“No, it’s not a date.”
"Stop talking about my father! By the way, what does your father do?”
?
Kei looked down the street through the glass. The crowd was moving silently in the sweltering heat. It seemed to Kei that the bustle through the glass looked coagulated like a plastic board.
"An office worker?”
Kei shook his head.
Rika turned her eyes round mysteriously, and picked up all occupational categories seen on the street.
Businessman, garbage man, taxi driver, home delivery service man, storekeeper of bookstore and hooligan distributing tissue.... Kei nodded none of them.
Rika got irritated and pout her lips.
"So which one?"
Kei said to Rika, leaving the seat with a cup finished off.
"What does it matter?”

Rika looked up at Kei’s profile for a while. She was absent-minded. Her clam eyes looked like Kaori’s somewhere and replaced precocious ones. Girls might have such a moment … Kei sometimes thought about it, but it disappeared at once. Rika?joked in a usual way.
“Kei, why do you act like a bad guy so much? Well, you look cute, I mean, not cool.

Kei stood up disregarding Rika’s words completely. While pushing the heave door of the shop, Kei looked back on his father’s cold profile at looking down at little Kei at his mother’s funeral, together with the image of anemic businessmen coming and going at Shinjuku restlessly. His father looked absent-minded somewhere as if the funeral had nothing to do with him.
Kei stopped feeling the stuffy heat, and looked back on Rika waving nonchalantly. Then he went back and sat next to Rika again.

It continues.

images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related